Decatur School Board Says No To E-Cigs

Decatur School Board Says No To E-Cigs

The Decatur City School board voted Monday to take the first step toward amending a policy regarding tobacco and tobacco related products.

The board voted to add electronic cigarette to the police that bans cigarettes and smokeless tobacco on school property and at school events.

An electronic cigarette, known as an e-cig, is a device that simulates smoking using a liquid. In most cases, the liquid has nicotine, but it doesn’t have to use that product to be considered an electronic cigarette. The liquid is vaporized and the process is called “vaping.”

The board will take input from the public, and make the final vote to ban electronic cigarettes in a month.

Moral Absolutes

The reality is that at this point nobody really knows how e-cigs can affect health. There is no real knowledge about how bad e-cigs are. All we know for sure is that they are far from being as bad as combustion cigarettes. Researchers are working on the matter but studies are often controversial depending on who is financing them. It reminds me about the Wi-Fi issue.

On a behavioural point of view, there is no evidence that e-cigs are more or less addictive than cigarettes, and even less evidence that when you start vaping you end up smoking. All studies so far are biased because they are based on vapers’ declarations, nothing is actually measured. This is why applying Quantified Self techniques to vaping would definitely give us objective and unbiased data to analyse and affect policy making in a knowledgeable way, independently from lobbies.

Three French startups are working on connecting vapers to their smartphone to collect data. Smokio (http://us.smokio.com/)) and Kosmo (http://getkosmo.com/?lang=en)) are the first companies to provide connected e-cigs. The problems they are facing though are the price and the rapidly evolving e-cig technology. The third player, MyVaps (http://igg.me/at/myvaps/x)) has taken a different path by developing a module that fits between the atomizer and the battery, and connects any e-cig to a smartphone.

It might take a while before these companies collect enough information on vapers’ behaviour but when they do, it will be very interesting to know when, where, how long and how much people vape.